The Perniciousness of the 2016 Election Cycle

Elections represent one of the most important hallmarks of a democratic political system.  It is a periodic opportunity for the citizens of the country to discuss, debate and seriously evaluate the positions of the various candidates on the key issues of the day and then vote for the candidate that they think best represents their views on the issues that are important to them. Unfortunately all this process is seriously being undermined in this election cycle.

The current election cycle started more than a year back, in the spring of 2015, with more than sixteen candidates vying for the Republican nomination and about four candidates competing for the Democratic nomination.  It is the Republican nomination process that attracted the most attention of the media and the public.  It has been primarily due to their eventual nominee, Donald Trump.  The Republican side was able to garner so much attention because of the outrageousness of the statements and positions of Donald Trump.  When he felt that the attention and spotlight was waning from him from time to time, he would make yet another even more outrageous statement than the previous one.  This guaranteed that the spotlight seldom wavered from Donald Trump.  The vitriol and the deeply personal nature of the name calling that ensued was unprecedented in modern American politics. 

The American public and the world at large found all this initially very entertaining.  But while we were being entertained through the hurling of insults, the personal belittlings, the discussion of the size of the candidates anatomies, and the hormonal cycles of the women who were part of the circus, we completely lost out on the opportunity for any serious discussion of any of the matters that are confronting the country and the world.  In fact, Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republican Party, has not articulated a single well thought out position on any topic.  His positions and musings are mostly limited to what he Tweets, using the 140 character limited micro blogs. 

The pattern is continuing in the general election.  We are now into the first week of the general election cycle and we have about thirteen more weeks to go.  This last week we have again been consumed by the insults that Donald Trump has now hurled at a Gold Star family of Muslim origins and his fights with the leadership team of his party.  In all likelihood, we are going to continue a similar pattern till the general election day.

President Obama once stated that elections have consequences.  The issues that the next President has to deal with are not trivial.  Just to list a few, on the domestic front, we have growing income inequality, corporate hegemonies, especially in the financial sector, that could barrel us towards another economic disaster, growing student debts, stagnant middle class wages and so on.  On the international front, the world is still smoldering from the effects of the ill-advised Iraq war and the embers of those smoldering flames are now traveling to America, Europe, Africa and Asia and is threatening the peace, tranquility and way of life that we are used to since World War II.  The result of this election is going to determine who is going to deal with these problems and how it will be addressed.  It is a travesty of the democratic process that the electorate will have to choose the next President without fully knowing or having a serious conversation and debate about the views and solutions that each candidate has.

This election cycle may be lost for just the silly.  But if this is not an isolated cycle, our country and the world at large will pay a huge price.  We need to seriously examine how we got here and a collective effort has to be made to ensure that we don’t go down this path again.  There are many contributing factors, but the main reason is the media.  The media provided the megaphone to Donald Trump and let him spew out the vitriol with unhindered access to the public.  The media, may ultimately be a business and they have to be worried about their bottom line.  They go where the ratings are.  But they also have a civic duty, unlike any other industry.  If the entire media rushes to where the tabloids are, we will soon be searching for the lowest common denominators of our society.  The airwaves are now filled 24 hours.  There is constant regurgitation of the same trivia and it creates an illusion of importance through sheer repetition. Then there are the paid analysts on the shows.  They are on the air strictly to parrot the partisan views of their side and to create conflict and hence drama on the air.  They do not contribute in any manner to the debate.

It may already be too late and the various actors policing themselves is just wishful thinking.  The corrosiveness of what we are witnessing may be here to stay.  And we may not have seen the bottom yet.

Seen and heard… circa 2033

The following stories were reported in various newspapers and media outlets during the year of 2033.

August 2033 – As reported in the sixth page of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH

“Solon, OH is a typical middle class city on the outskirts of the metropolis of Cleveland, OH.  The Solon High School, home of the Comets, has consistently been graded as “Excellent with Distinction” in State school rankings.  The school boasts a near perfect graduating record with more than 90% of its graduating seniors moving onto prestigious local and national Universities to pursue their college degrees.  

Even though the schools in neighboring cities like Warrensville Heights and Bedford Heights have had incidents of gun violence, Solon has enjoyed relative tranquility up until now.  This morning, at 7:45 AM, John Adams, a fifteen year old junior, got into a verbal argument with another junior Scott Walker about a shared interest in fellow junior Lisa Munroe.  The argument soon erupted into some pushing and shoving and the other students milling around the locker room area tried to intervene and separate them.  John Adams at this time lost his composure, reached into his locker to grab his semi-automatic Colt 45 and started shooting into the crowded hallway.  Many students ducked for cover and several others reached into their own lockers, grabbed their weapons and started shooting.  Within a few minutes, the school security arrived with fully automatic weapons and not being sure about the reason for the gun fire, ensured that all students with weapons were taken down.  When the bodies were counted, in all fifteen students were killed and thirty other students were transported to area hospitals with varying degrees of gunshot wounds.  At least three of the students are in critical condition and are not expected to survive.  Classes resumed within thirty minutes of the end of the gunfire.  The principal made an announcement over the PA system about the need to show restraint while getting into any arguments and encouraged the students to avoid reaching for their guns first.  Later that afternoon he called the parents of the slain students to inform them about the tragedy.  He also posted the list of the names of the slain students in the school Notice Board.

While there was no candle light vigil or any such remembrance for the slain students, a small group of mothers, may be not more than six, associated with an organization called “Mothers Against Arming Children (MAAC)” staged a thirty minute rally in front of school protesting the rights of students to bring firearms into school buildings.  They were roundly booed by a larger group of people, ostensibly supporters of the NRA.  The passing cars honked their horns in support of the NRA supporters.  Luckily, the protesting mothers and the NRA supporters dispersed in about 30 minutes without any untoward incidents.

It is apt to recall that, about twenty years back, in the neighboring city of Chardon, TJ Lane, a high school student, walked into his school cafeteria one early morning in February and started randomly shooting at his schoolmates.  The resulting carnage left three students dead.  The incident triggered a furious debate in the state with gun control advocates pushing for stronger controls on gun purchase.  The NRA and their supporters resorted to the familiar argument that it is not the guns that kill, but it is the people.  They argued that if the other students in Chardon had carried guns, TJ Lane could have been taken down by another student with a gun.  The NRA argument prevailed that day.  The NRA and gun rights advocates worked hard in the state legislatures to successfully remove the designation of schools as “gun free” zones.  The incident in Solon leaves one to wonder what would be today’s argument by the NRA.”

It is also worthwhile to observe that there was no national or local coverage for the incident in Solon other than the report in the Plain Dealer.

September 2033, as reported in the Oberlin-News Tribune

On September 21, 2013, the Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial started the following way “Oberlin, Ohio was the latest victim Monday night of firearms aficionados who seem intent on turning the entire state into a shooting range”.  The Plain Dealer editorial was lamenting the action the previous week by the Oberlin City Council to rescind a local ordinance that had prohibited weapons in Oberlin’s public parks.  

The words of the Plain Dealer editorial were prescient and it came to be yesterday evening, almost twenty years to the day.  Yesterday evening, the soccer field on the City Park turned into a shooting range that saw pitched gun battles between several parents that resulted in the death of eight adults and ten children.  It all started when Joey Forina, a ten year old fifth grader, fouled Marco Swanson, a much smaller nine year old fourth grader.  The parents of the two boys were watching from the sidelines.  Marco was visibly hurt from the kick to his shin and both his parents rushed to his side to check on him.  They also scolded Joey for his unsportsmanlike conduct in not helping Marco to his feet.  Joey’s parents, who were also watching the boys from the sidelines, did not take kindly to Marco’s parents exchanging any words with their son.  The two parents got into an argument that led to other parents getting involved in the argument and people taking sides.  Unfortunately the tensions boiled over.  It is not clear who reached for their guns first, but it is safe to say that many parents came to the soccer grounds packing their guns.  It appears that is the custom these days in all public parks.  The police arrived within a few minutes of the starting of the melee and was able to stop any further carnage.

Since 2013, when the ordinance to designate city parks as gun free zones was rescinded, the city has seen several gun related incidents that have resulted in occasional gun fights and unfortunate resulting casualties.  But the city has never seen anything of the scale as we witnessed today.  There is already debate starting in the city halls that the city should allow its citizens to carry automatic weapons and also be able to openly display that they are carrying arms.  The argument goes that if the parents who engaged in the gun fights knew that others were armed and were able to see the type of ammo they were packing, they would have been less reluctant to reach for their guns.  The NRA representative made this argument very strongly in front of a crowd of parents that had assembled in the soccer stadium.  From the body language of the assembled crowd, it appears that the NRA has a winning argument.  The NRA representative indicated that the City Council members supporting its position would soon introduce bills to allow the citizens to openly display any ammunition they pack, including the likes of AK-47 and AR-15 guns.

Deleterious effects of NSA snooping

The voluminous pages of classified information that were leaked by Edward Snowden, an erstwhile NSA contractor, revealed the elaborate, systematic and ongoing snooping by the NSA into every phone call, email  and internet action by ordinary citizens in the US and in other countries.  The volume of data and the type of data that is being collected by the NSA is staggering.  NSA can, through its archives, and if it so wants, piece together every action, thought or conversation that ordinary people have every day in the conduct of their personal lives, their professions or their hobbies.  It is indeed Orwell’s Big Brother fully deployed with the assistance of modern day technology.  And just as in Orwell’s novel, it is all being done in the name of national security and the desire to protect us from each other.

While there is discourse and debate among civil libertarians about what all this snooping means with regards to individual liberty that is at the essence of the US constitution, there seems to be an overall apathy to the Government intrusion amongst the public.  After a series of national traumas starting with 9/11, and then the prolonged wars , the many foiled terrorist activities in the homeland and the Boston Marathon bombings, the country is in a mood to give up certain liberties for buying some piece of mind with the knowledge that the Government is watching and ahead of the curve on what the bad guys amongst us are up to.  A case can be made that if the Government was able to get to the doings of the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, the Boston Marathon bombings could have been avoided.

But what would we be trading for giving up our privacy and through that our freedom to have uninhibited thoughts?  What corrosive long term consequences will that have on the nation’s standing as the bastion of individual liberty and the guarantor of freedom to pursue happiness of their definition by its citizens?  And consequently, what will that mean for our economic security in an evolving interconnected world?

The world we live in is changing at a rapid pace.  The pace and the dramatic nature of the changes are being ushered in because of the technology changes.  And the United States is at the heart of many of the evolving technologies – the discovery of the science needed to make the technologies, the innovative application of these discoveries to come up with new inventions, and the re-arranging of ways of living by incorporating these new technologies into our daily lives. 

The US is economically benefiting significantly because of this leadership position that it holds today.  But other countries are catching up and are trying to participate in the innovation game and being the first ones to come up with new ideas and products.  The world of tomorrow will be a hugely interconnected world of commerce and the countries are going to become like corporations – those that continually innovate are going to hold positions of power, influence and hegemony.   The US is a leader today because the best talent in the world wants to come to its shores to use their mind and brains to create the new discoveries and innovations of tomorrow.  A large part of that attraction is because of the openness of the society that we have created and the guaranty of freedom to pursue ideas that are outside the mainstream.  We may not be an attractive society if we start telegraphing to the world that there is interference to that freedom of thought.  And soon, we may not have the edge in the cycle of innovation.

We cannot live in a world anymore where we are cocooned off from the rest of the world.  Our security cannot be defined anymore just as the security of the geographic boundaries.  The shrinking of the world through internet and travel has inextricably interconnected the world and the economic security of our nation goes beyond the national borders.  Any policy that talks about security has to look at beyond the borders and the implications of our standing in the context of the whole world.

We may be able to block the terrorists entering the nation or perpetrating cowardly acts in our homeland by resorting to overwhelming snooping of all activities.  But during that process, we may also stop the inflow of superior brains from all over the world into our country and over a period of time give up our perch as the economic leader of the world.  

American Exceptionalism

Tuesday of this week, President Barack Obama made his case to the nation for his set of actions on the civil war raging in Syria. In the absence of a clear threat to the United States or a threat to its interests and also in the face of overwhelming national apathy to get involved in yet another conflict in the Middle East, Mr. Obama had a difficult task at hand.  He evoked the images of children dying due to the chemical attacks by the Assad regime as the principal reason for US involvement in the conflict.  He ended his address by stating that Americans cannot look the other way when children are being murdered and our concern makes us exceptional, unlike any other country.

The next day, Vladimir Putin, his political nemesis on the Syria matter, took to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times with his take on why US should not use force.  He also used the piece to chide Mr. Obama to refer to Americans as exceptional and added “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation”.  Mr. Putin’s completely off-mark interpretation of the remarks by the President could be attributed to the Russians extreme sensitivity to any group asserting superiority over others.  After all that is how the Nazi era was born, with Hitler asserting the superiority of the Aryan race over everyone else, and Russia suffered heavily because of the actions of that group.  So it is important to re-assure Putin that he has nothing to fear and to ensure that he understands the correct interpretation of American exceptionalism.

America is exceptional because of its people.  There is no other country in the world except the United States where its people do not have a shared ancestry. And there is no other country other than the US where it has enshrined in its founding documents, the principle of equality of all its diverse people, and the freedom to pursue happiness the way they see fit.  This incredible commitment to diversity and liberty has created a melting pot of culture, fusion of ideas, and a crucible for innovation from which new strains of thoughts and ways of living are evolving every day.  America is exceptional not because of its military superiority.  America is exceptional because there is opportunity for every citizen to achieve exception in whatever they want to pursue without the fear of Government or other consequences.

There are exceptional men and women in many countries, highly likely in the same proportions as in the US, and these exceptional people belong to different hues, ethnicity and religions.  But the countries that these exceptional people belong to are not exceptional.  All Americans are not exceptional, but America is exceptional because of all its people.

Are we there yet?

This week we are celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.  In that speech MLK Jr. spoke of a promised land of racial equality.  After more than 70 years of civil rights struggle and fifty years since the speech, the question “are we there yet?” is on many people’s mind.  The recent ruling by the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act seems to make the assertion that we have already been there for a while now.  The Supreme Court seems to say that the protections that have been written into our laws since the sixties, with the passing of the landmark Civil Rights Legislation and the Voting Rights Act, are less relevant anymore because our society has evolved and we have turned the page on the ugliness of the days of segregation.  In essence, the Supreme Court is making the statement that we are “there”.  So where are we? 

The Preacher in his speech fifty years back spoke of how the nation has defaulted on its promissory note of equality for all people.  He spoke eloquently of his dream of a society in which one day his four black children would hold hands with white children and walk the streets of Mississippi.  And he spoke of his dream of a society that will one day judge its citizens by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.  This speech was the seminal point in our march towards a society which could turn the page on its ugly history of racism and discrimination.  Many of us have a definition of “there”, as the society that Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about.

By the definitions espoused by MLK Jr., and for many minorities in our society, we have indeed arrived there.  We have to look no further than the White House for proof.  The President, a black man, ran against two white opponents in consecutive elections and was elected by the country by overwhelming majority.  The country judged the man by the content of his character and the strength of his vision and not by the color of his skin and made the determination that he was the better man.  If MLK Jr. was alive today, he would be pleased with seeing a person of color sitting in the Oval Office.  While the black President is one powerful symbol of the progress we have made, it is not just an isolated symbol of progress.  We have today, many blacks and other minorities in several important positions of power and influence holding elected offices, leading major corporations and so on.  The richest woman in the television world and all of entertainment is a black woman, who gets recognized the world over by just her first name Oprah.  There cannot be a bigger symbol of economic progress that some in the black community have made in the last fifty years.

But still we are all not certain that we have arrived “there”.  Many of us still believe that there is work to be done and the struggle that was started more than fifty years ago has to be continuous and ongoing.  The doubters are justified in their feeling.  Not too long ago, a black teenager was murdered in Florida only because of the color of his skin and he looked suspicious because of that.  The nation erupted into a soul searching exercise of what it meant, whether the murder harkened us back to the days of 1955 when Emmitt Till was murdered in a back alley in Mississippi because of the color of his skin.  The fact that an isolated murder in the streets of Florida could evoke such emotions is proof that we are not comfortable that we have put the past of our racial history behind us.    Our feeling of inequality of the races is backed by several other stats – high rates of incarceration of young black men and women; high rate of single family households in the black community; national income averages among the black population that is lower than other racial groups; infant mortality rates among black population that is higher than other groups.  The bleak stats can go on for multiple pages.  The fact that one ethnic group is at such a disproportionate disadvantage has to be because of a reason.  And it is natural to say that it is because of racism and bigotry in our society and because we haven’t arrived at a place where the playing field is level. One cannot blame anybody for such skepticism.

There is a disproportionate percentage of the black population that is at a disadvantage today.  It is not because there is still widespread institutional racism.  It is because there haven’t been adequate well executed policies that ensured that the black community was given the lift that it needed.  The black community was in an incredibly deep hole when the country’s collective conscience recognized the injustice and inequality perpetrated on them.  We have to recognize that the hole was being dug for two hundred prior years.  We needed all the heavy lifting we could by passing of laws with enough teeth, framing of policies with long term effects, commitment of resources lasting multiple generations, and flawless execution across multiple administrations to ensure that segments of population that was deep down in the hole were given the buoyancy needed to get the lift and take off.  In the last several decades, we have waned in our support for economic policies that will provide the necessary economic lift.  And consequently large segments of the black community are trapped in the endless cycle of unemployment, poverty and crime.

The answer to the question “Are we there yet?” is not that straightforward anymore.  Clearly the train left the station five decades back.  Many bogies have already arrived “there” and the President, Oprah and the countless black men and black women in various strata of society are shining examples of the successful journey.  But several bogies of the train also got unhitched along the way.  And these bogies are mired in the tracks of unemployment, poverty, violence and incarceration and for them the economic deprivation of today is no different than the social deprivation of fifty years back and their destination looks beyond reach.

Shriram's road trip through the US heartland

In early August, my friend and colleague Shriram, who lives in Cincinnati, OH took a fifteen day motorcycle trip through the heartland of USA.  His road trip, in his Suzuki motorcycle, that covered a total of 4,300 miles and consumed a total of 110 galls of gas, took him through Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas to Colorado and he travelled back to Cincinnati via the Rocky Mountains, Yellow Stone National Park, Mt. Rushmore, Minneapolis and Chicago.  Shriram put together a wonderful photo essay of his journey that captures beautifully the places he visited, the people he met and the experiences he had.  It is a very engaging photo essay and you can find it in Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-EWahHzZo4)

While I was struck by the sheer adventurous nature of Shriram’s undertaking, I was more impressed with the stories that Shriram shared with me about the many people he met and befriended along the way.  These are strangers he ran into because of several reasons – because he was lost, because he ran out of gas and was stuck in the middle of a highway between distant cities , because he hooked up a conversation with someone in a gas station or in a restaurant, or just because he stopped and talked to someone.  The strangers extended their generosity, their friendship, their hospitality and the sheer warmth of heart to a fellow human being exploring the country.  These stories are incredible because they look improbable in this modern day and age.

While driving through Goodland, Kansas, Shriram saw a gentle looking middle aged woman walking on the road, and he stopped his motorcycle and said hello to her.  Lorma and Shriram became instant friends.  Soon Shriram found himself in Lorma’s house greeting her eighty year old mother and exchanging stories from his Indian background.  The evening turned into a two day stay in their house with shared cooking experiences, horse back rides and so on and a lifelong friendship that I am sure will endure.

And while crossing Kansas, Shriram ran out of gas and was stuck in the freeway.  Suddenly a stranger appeared from nowhere, pulled a gas can out his truck and filled up Shriram’s motorcycle.  The stranger turned to be a 30 year old transplant from Dayton, OH to somewhere in the middle of Kansas.  Gerald refused to accept any money for the gas, told Shriram that it is his duty and obligation to help another human being and the help was not rendered for money.  Last week, Gerald was visiting his family in Dayton and he made sure that he visited Shriram in Cincinnati before returning back to Kansas. 

On his return leg, somewhere between Rocky Mountains and Yellow Stone, Shriram was filling gas, when a stranger walked over to chat.  It turned out that the stranger was going to a camp that was gathering for a fund raiser to raise money for some veteran’s cause.  Soon, Shriram found himself following this stranger in his Jeep through some unpaved gravel roads off the main highway.  Shriram had no idea where he was and was scared whether he was doing the right thing and doubts formed in his head as to his safety.  Suddenly the stranger stopped his Jeep, and got out of the car and approached the trailing Shriram to inquire whether the dust that his car was kicking up was bothering him.  And if so, he wanted Shriram to lead the trail to the camp site.  They soon were in a camp ground with hundreds of people talking about their road trip, sharing drinks and dancing through the night.

We live in a world today where when we hear about such acts of generosity, and such friendships extended, they look improbable.  I don’t think we can blame us for that.  After all we are inundated by stories like that of the killing of Trayvon Martin by a George Zimmerman, because Trayvon was black and was in the “wrong neighborhood”; or the story of the killing of a student from Australia in the campus of Oklahoma University by three teenagers because they were looking for a cheap thrill; or the abduction of three teenage girls in the streets of Cleveland by a sex addicted school bus driver and holding them in captivity for more than a decade.  When all that we hear are these stories, it is only natural for us to believe that there is more evil than good among us. We ingrain our children from a very young age to be weary and vigilant of any strangers.  We reinforce such beliefs at every turn, for example we have successfully turned a festival like Halloween into an occasion to be suspicious of the generosity of our neighbors. And we get even more preoccupied with arming us even more with concealed weapons or automatic weapons that can fire thirty bullets in a minute so that we can protect ourselves from each other.

Shriram’s journey through the heartland of America was an exercise in sheer adventure and exploration and a desire to get to know better the country he has adopted.  I am so happy he did it and he shared his stories with me.  But for me, his stories are a reinforcement of my belief that we still live in a society where there is more good than we know or recognize.  I hope I have one day a chance to go on an expedition like what Shriram did and experience such goodness.  And I hope all of you have the same opportunity.

Thank you Shriram for doing the road trip and sharing your stories.

Krishnaji - A Short Story

“I will make dinner early today and I want you all to finish your dinner by 7:00 PM”, my mother announced tersely.  She was looking forward to attending the reading of the sacred book of Ramayana and storytelling by Krishnaji, a Guru visiting my town.  Krishnaji will be in town for the next several weeks.  I already knew the routine.  Mother would attend the story telling sessions that go late into the evening.  Hurrying home before her five children went to bed, she would be anxious to share the words of wisdom that the eloquent Guru had told the gathering.  The Guru was waft in weaving the stories of Gods, demi Gods, and ways of life into an entertaining rendition that captivates the faithful devotee as well as the casual observer.

I accompanied my mother on a few occasions.  I was impressed with the fluency of Krishnaji in Tamil and English.  He would in one continuous swoop quote the Bible, Bagavad Gita (the holy scripture of a Hindu) and a parable of life and weave that into the story of the life of Rama that formed the context of his rendition. 

His given name was Krishna.  But his followers would call him Krishnaji, adding the “ji” at the end as a sign of respect and reverence and an acknowledgement of his exalted soul.  Krishnaji was in his early thirties, but he looked much older than his age.  May be it was the way he dressed, a draping of a single sheet of white cotton sheet, called dothi, around his waist, a smaller piece of white cloth, more like a towel, across his bare chest made the rest of his clothing.  He had a long beard.  His long hair was rolled into a bulb that was held together with a rubber band.  As what an ascetic should wear, he had the white sacred ash smeared across his forehead and over his chest and hands.  He would close his eyes often, as if in deep trance, or as if he was in communication with God.  His face and body radiated serenity.  He had a retinue of disciples, hanging to his every word and the deference and obsequiousness of his followers could be seen from a distance.

No wonder my mother was taken by Krishnaji.  She is easily taken by anyone who could quote the scriptures or has a word of wisdom and it was no surprise that by the second week she was so enamored by Krishnaji, that it became the only topic of conversation at the dinner table and the evening hours.  In the beginning, I would silently suffer my mother repeating Krishnaji’s lessons on ways of life.  Over time I realized my mother was starting to feel that my ways of life as a 16 year old were not in line with Krishnaji’s various pronouncements.  My silence soon led to mild demurs and then to loud vocal protests and open squabbles with my mother.  I would soon start criticizing Krishnaji on things he would say about his pronouncement that a man has to marry within his caste.  I was a progressive, believing in the oneness of human beings, and with little tolerance for divisions across caste, religion, and the myriad other clans and sub-clans that Indians seem to divide themselves into.

Krishnaji formed a large legion of followers in my town.  He would visit my town several times in an year and the crowds grew bigger with each such visit.  On one of those visits, a young woman, half his age and of a lower cast, approached Krishnaji and asked if she could join his retinue and achieve religious salvation through service to him.  Krishnaji hardly even raised his eye from the scripture he was reading and asked one of his main devotees to handle the matter.  Soon enough, the damsel was part of Krishnaji’s retinue.

One early morning, Krishnaji opened his eyes after a long period of meditation and caught sight of the damsel returning to his ashram after a bath in a nearby river.  The wet sari was clinging to her skin, like an onion skin to a wet surface, and the contours of her shapely body were well amplified.  She almost looked naked.  Krishnaji couldn’t pull away from the allure of the roundness of her supple breasts, her narrow waist and her shapely buttocks, that were clearly visible in the early light of the dawn.  The sight of the attractive woman stirred something deep within Krishnaji, as he had never experienced before.  He felt a pang of shock jolting through his loins.  From that day onwards, Krishnaji would open his eyes from his meditation when the damsel would come back from her bath in the river.  It wasn’t long before Krishnaji married the damsel.

Word reached my town that Krishnaji married someone of lower caste by falling in love with a woman, as opposed to an arranged marriage, the worst way a man can bring shame to his family.  Within a few months of his marriage, Krishnaji made his way back to my town to profess his lessons of life.  The crowd this time was much thinner.  And my mother pretended as if she didn’t know Krishnaji was in town.